Exporting plugin chains
 

Hi all,

Does anyone here know how to export plugin chains so that they can be used on another machine?

I have transferred the filmstock gamma curves from Color Finesse and FilmFX2 into Vegas and want to make them available on my website. The current download apparently doesn't work on peoples computers so there is obviously something extra that I need to export/do to make them work.

Currently the looks can be found here http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/Filmstock_presets.htm

Simon - I've called/phoned you!

Anyway, you need to download and use "Preset Manager".

Grazie

Hi Graham,

Thanks for ringing. Hopefully the presets work now! :)

Purfeckt! Thanks for sharing . .

You should also look at the VASST site Presets . .excellent!

vasst.com

Click on Free Resources ..

Grazie

Grazie and others also have several preset manager files on my site under the Shared Effects section.

Yep, just checked out the other looks. Some pretty cool ones there.

I've been meaning to transfer these gamma curves for an age now. There are a few more looks I will put up soon. I'll put the Wild West one up tomorrow.

Simon, my special interests at the moment are to achieving similar to Frosts and Pro-Mists filters that tend to "Brighten/Lighten" the darks and "Darken" the brights. That is why I like your latest collection. The woodland scenes really do it for me.

I wish people would experiment more with Fxs in these subtle ways. I have been seeing many examples of late of the the "before" and "after" from major films - it is quite astonishing how much is done in post to achieve a "look" - a look that is then kept and retained throughout the movie. This has been an eye-opener for me. The art of the colourist is a very subtle and essential craft.

Grazie

Simon,

I know this complicates things but the way some of the Vegas filters work, they cause technical inaccuracies.

1- A lot of the filters don't play well with 16-235 "studio RGB" color space, with black level at 16 and white level at 235. If you encode a DVD out of Vegas, some DVD players will clip anything outside the 16-235 range in Vegas.

The color curves filter is a good example of this. Doing the s-curve thing pushes color outside legal range and most people aren't going to see that shadow and highlight detail. It's somewhat counter-productive as it throws away perfectly good exposure latitude.

To fix that, you can hack the color curves filter like so:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=54544

2- This doesn't make too much of a difference, but the math between various Vegas filters are different.
HSL is based on HSL color space. The saturation is dissimilar from saturation you see in the real world.
Color Corrector is based on quasi-Y'CbCr color space, where saturation is really a chroma control.
Black and white I believe is based on (R + G + B) / 3. This is inaccurate, because the formula should be 0.299 R’ + 0.587 G’ + 0.144 B’ (for Rec. 601 color space/DV, not HD/HDV). Green should play a bigger role in determining brightness than red or blue. That's not the case when you just average R G and B (averaging gives equal weight to R, G, and B).

There's subtle differences between each filter. The easiest way to see this is to fully de-saturate the color bars generator. Basically, the color corrector is the most accurate. It's still slightly off, because it doesn't follow the principle of constant luminance. But that's a reasonable tradeoff as it makes video easier to process.


Cheers.

Hi Glenn,

Yes, I realise the problems with being 'safe'. Which is why on my website I stated that these filters are only a starting point and will need to be tweaked in order to meet 16-235 specs. :) But it is a valid point to bring up that should be reinforced as many people might overlook this aspect.

I use the same method to you with the curves when I am legalising output for a final video. The only difference is that I notice that on your s-curve example you have 'flatlined' the curve at the ends. I assume this was for illustrative purposes?

Fot my filters I preferred to leave legalising to whoever was using the filters. THis is also because many videos are output for the web and can use more of the range too, so it didn't make sense to artificially restrict them.

Graham,

Yes, a lot of films go through the DI process now with lots of CC'ing going on. I am not sure if I am much of a fan of it though. I do occasionally experiment with looks on my own footage. However I usually try to enhance what is already there, or try to bring out the main 'feel' of the footage that is present rather than to try and completely change the look altogether.

When I shoot video I will always have my camera setup for maximum range to allow me to tweak the highlights and shadows accordingly (assuming a natural light setting such as landscape photography, of which I do quite a lot).

Occasionally I will delve into more extreme looks, and I will place some examples up soon. But Glenns comments have got me thinking about placing up a companion article about ensuring that the signal won't be clipped by many of todays DVD players.

Hi Simon,

The point of the flattening is so that you can manipulate the curve while always maintaining legal white and black level. 16 will stay at 16, 235 at 235. If you want to take advantage of the superwhites, then you can simply delete two of the top two points.

2- I have an article that goes over levels at:
http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/ar...s_part_one.htm

The information is somewhat different/not-applicable though.

Thanks Glenn. Although I am still not sure of the reason for the flattening. Surely that would just clip detail, thus, particularly in the highlights, defying any film style highlight roll-off?

I usually keep a smooth curve all the way to the extremes of the line, but by lifting and lowering the ends like you have I can keep my video legal without any need to totally flatten the ends. For example (excusing the terrible artefacts created by very high JPEG compression) http://www.simonwyndham.co.uk/exampl...vesExample.jpg

Hi Simon,

The flattening assumes that you're working with DV footage with the Vegas 6 defaults (default = Sony DV codec). The Sony DV codec decodes black level to 16, and white level to 235. If you make a DVD, the MPEG2 encoder assumes black level is at 16 and white level at 235. So to keep black level and white level where they are, you need to do that flattening.

Remember: If you encode a DVD out of Vegas, anything outside 16-235 may be clipped.

2- There's also the issue of superwhites. Many DV cameras will record information above white level. So to take that into account, simply delete the two points bunched together in the upper right. Or use the other preset in that .veg I have.

Yes, thats true. But I'm still not sure of the purpose of flattening rather than using a smooth curve. Flattening will just clip information along the length of the flattened line.

But back to the plugin chains for a second. Still remember that not every output needs legalising, hence the reason I left the curves without this. But regarding MPEG encoding. Are you sure Vegas clips it on output? I'll have to check. Not all DVD players clip information, and in fact many commercial DVD's contain information outside of the 16-235 range.